Editor’s Pick, December 2017: Joseph Stramondo

Our Editor’s Pick for our December 2017 issue is Joe Stramondo’s paper, “Disabled By Design: Justifying and Limiting Parental Authority to Choose Future Children with Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis.” In this fascinating paper, Stramondo takes up the increasingly visible question of when and whether eugenic steps to create a disabled child—for instance, to select an embryo with Achondroplasia or genetic deafness—can be morally permissible. Stramondo rejects some extreme views and argues that “future parents are not morally required to use PGD to select some vision of an objectively “best” child, but should be permitted to use PGD to select embryos according to their own conception of the good life, even if that conception of the good life includes disability.” This paper takes up important questions, provides nuanced analysis, and challenges our intuitions about what it means to care properly for the well-being of our future children.